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Thursday, December 8, 2011

Getting Ready

For how many hours, total,have you showered.How many inches of hairhave you sliced offand let fall. Self-maintenanceis manageable asa small component of the day,but if you collectedeach sliver of time in a pile,what structure couldhouse it. We could fill canyonswith nail clippingsand individually dislodgedstrands from oureyebrows. Getting ready isa ritual. How willour bodies and faces appearto the world today.Which plans call for the mostmirror-scrutiny.We must make ourselvespresentable, musttake responsibility for thebruisey stripes beneathour eyes, the texture of skinand edges of nails.When you do your hair, dotranslates one wayfor you, another for me. Donot rush. Put onyour face so we know who youare, and let ustake a good, long look at you.

I love this, and you had me thinking. My favorite in addition to the hair thing is the bruisey eye... I take moments to get ready, my husband is so proud and can never complain that it takes his wife for ever to get ready...still...adding those moments up!!! Once I went away to a village and did not have a mirror...did not see myself in two weeks. Things change very quickly without mirrors. Happy Thursday Hannah!

we flow through time, and the days flow through us ... at any given instant, we seem solid and defined -- but all that hair and fingernails (among other things) suggest that we are actually quite permeable -- the stuff of the world flows into us, and back out, our bodies are ever changing, we each are a wave through matter that picks up pieces here and there and rides them for a bit and leaves them behind, our only physical integrity being the signal, the energy that lifts the matter, not the matter itself ... a well done, thought-provoking poem, hannah ...